Hadees Market releases a brand new album, ‘Missives at the Turn’, a melodic repertoire of very well crafted songs.

Hadees Market combines elegant and salty poetic imagery and soulful vocals with appropriately riffing or glistening guitar per song. It’s the longtime musical endeavor of performing songwriter Greg Williamson, joined by other US Pacific Northwest musicians on studio recordings. When Hadees Market has played live shows in 2021, it has been with this lineup Williamson on guitar and vocals, Chris Livesay of The Civilians on bass, and Tommy Simpson on drums (who is also in the Seattle band Fale). For inspiration, they combine the beauty of vintage classics like the 60s ‘Rubber Soul’ or ‘Revolver’ with the folk-rock/power pop of the 90s This Perfect World.

The album’s twelve tracks were recorded at Earwig Studio and co-produced by its owner Don Farwell (from the band Suitcase) with Williamson. The band has most recently played out with Saint Hussy and Yeti, Set Go.

Williamson’s work as a drummer has been featured on a handful of full-length releases and EPs (on cassettes, vinyl, and CDs) since the 1980’s, as has his songwriting. As Hadees Market, Williamson released an EP called ‘Cherries’ on CD in 2003. He released another EP, ‘To the Island, From the Lake’, on streaming platforms in 2021. The full-length release ‘Missives at the Turn’, features six songs from the 2021 EP updated with additional vocals and instrumentation, and six previously unreleased songs.

You’re about a month away from your debut album, ‘Missives at the Turn’, how long did you work on it and did you find the weird times we’re living in as an advantage when working on new songs? [Interview conducted in September 2022]

Greg Williamson: First off, Klemen, thanks for the opportunity to talk about the album, and thanks for your questions. I admire your work and perspective. Thanks for your patience with me getting these responses to you. When you sent this, the album release was about a month away. Now it’s a few weeks away. This week, in addition to my very busy day job, I’ve been juggling an all-day remote photo shoot, listening to drafts of a dance remix of one of my songs, prepping for the digital release of the album on October 7th, lining up a venue for a album release party on October 12, prepping for a gig opening for Seattle’s The Civilians on November 4th, ordering CDs and merch, and getting ready for a short trip overseas. This album release calendar stuff is NOT for the faint of heart.

It’s been a little over three years since I was introduced to the amazing Don Farwell and first showed up at Earwig Studio with my acoustic guitar in June of 2019. That day, I recorded vocals and guitar for 24 songs, and half of those songs showed up on the album. Yes, the times were already weird, and then they certainly got weirder. Realistically, even though this was my first full length album as Hadees Market, and even though I was learning as I went, I think Don and I could have shaved a year off the timeline if not for Covid. I think that’s maybe the biggest challenge during a time delay (imposed not only on me but the rest of the world…) how to keep the groceries fresh and crisp?

If we hadn’t made a great rock record (and, based on how it sounds turned up loud on my car’s CD player in the sun, I think that we did), it would be more difficult. But, some of these songs go back ten years, to a time when I was a different person. I have more songs from that initial 2019 batch for the sessions that became ‘Missives at the Turn.’ I’ve written a bunch of new stuff over the past three years. I had hoped to have a second album done by now.

The delays opened up some possibilities as well. There were two musicians, Sharon Chang and Ed Otto, with whom I might not have been able to work, without the temporary closure of the studio for band recordings. Earwig Studio was running a modified schedule for several months. Don was able to come in and do some mixing or production work, but bands were not coming into the studio to record. At this time, I was ONE SONG AWAY from finishing my EP in 2020. The sixth song on the album is ‘Mouth and Collar,’ and the song was recorded, and was only missing a solo near the end. Don asked Sharon to play piano, and she recorded some very expressive but restrained piano that ended up on the record.

Then, when I started the second six songs to complete the album, Don was able to get his Suitcase co-conspirator, guitarist Ed Otto, to record several solo guitar parts for the song ‘What You Want,’ and slide them in digitally. I really don’t think that either of those collaborations would have happened without the effects of Covid on the community. Don needed to be a very savvy business person and create flexibility to face a global pandemic, and the Earwig community responded to his situation in many supportive ways. For example, some of us who knew that we would be doing recording in the future pre-paid for the studio ahead of time, so that Don had a predictable source of income to weather the storm.

I felt like I had a good pile of songs going into the recording of this record, and although I have not written as much as I usually would because of Covid, some of the songs have more power because of the strange times we were living in when they were recorded.

Would you like to talk a bit about the background that led to the making of your solo album?

Yes, I would love to talk about the background of the album, but to do so, I have to tell you a little about my musical journey.

When I was a child (I was born in 1963, barely more than a year before the Beatles played on The Ed Sullivan Show, when the world was still in black and white), music was everywhere, and the music on the radio in many countries was quite literally transforming the cultural stories of the world as we knew it. A neighbor across the street had a teenage son, and that teenage son was a Beatles fan. I remember my parents taking me over to visit and he showed us his room, which was full of memorabilia of the Beatles and other British Invasion bands. We moved away from that house when I was three. So, some of my earliest memories were about the Beatles coming to the U.S.A., and I felt a strong connection with them.

When I was old enough to go to school in the drizzly fall of 1968, I did so on a big, yellow Billig school bus (or sometimes a Blue Bird), and high up on the ceiling of that bus, there were crappy little speakers that played the current Top 40 AM radio hits. Those speakers are where I heard songs like ‘Penny Lane,’ ‘Hey Jude,’ ‘Revolution,’ ‘Strawberry Fields’ and “Fool on the Hill,” and the other late-career singles, when the Beatles were still making and releasing records. I was also hearing all of the other bands of the day. This was over the sounds of loud elementary students. The music caught me, and lit a spark.

I remember another early music memory from elementary school. We had a school choir class, and one year, we got to sing ‘Get Together,’ which I later learned was written by Chet Powers who performed as Dino Valenti, and which was made famous by Jesse Colin Young and the Youngbloods. I’d heard the Youngbloods’ version on the radio. This time, I was hearing the song as sung by a bunch of my fellow little kids’ voices, but I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the song, and I think that it embodied the complexity of feelings stirred up in the U.S. and worldwide by the events of the 1960’s.

In fourth grade, I wanted to play drums in the school band. With any other instrument, you could just sign up and play. But for drums, the teacher told us that we had to take piano lessons first, to learn how to read music and written rhythm. I loved the piano, and I started writing simple melodies. My piano teacher was less interested in my melodies and more interested in getting me to practice scales. I parted with the piano lessons after a few months of frustration, and kept going with the drums. I can’t really read music today, but I’m still thankful that those adults made me spend some time with the piano. We had an old one in our basement, and that helped me find melodies when I was a kid.

In middle school, I was a reliable “third or fourth chair” drummer. Or maybe I’d get to pound on the upright bass drum with the big fluffy beater. I had this band teacher, who looked like a hipper version of Pete Fountain. His name was Cedric Hotchkiss. One day, he brought in a 45 single with ‘Dream On,’ by Aerosmith on one side, and on the flip-side was the same song, featuring the individual tracks (bass, drums, guitars, vocals), and describing the recording process. It was an educational tool for students, and it was the first time I ever heard multi-track recording. I experienced the magic, and wished that I could go to magician school. NOTE: I am still searching the internet to find a copy of this single; maybe one of your readers also knows it?

Then, in the mid to late ‘70s, in NYC and London and other places, something big happened that, like most things, didn’t really make it all the way to Rosedale, Washington, U.S.A. until a few years later. It was called “punk rock.” And it was raw, and loud, and offensive, and kinda stoopid, and more than a little bit flailing. And even a former-fourth-chair drummer and his loud high school friends could see themselves in it.

So, when we heard the Sex Pistols and the Ramones, we started making noise together. Just like they did. No one called it “DIY” at the time, but that’s what we were doing. We would spontaneously make up a song live in the moment, and then record it through the crappy condenser mic on a boom-box cassette deck. And in 1979 and 1980 we did our first practices and performances while we were still in high school, and when I went off to college in ‘81, we were a punk band.

I was brought up in classic rock, Beatles, Stones, Led Zeppelin, Sabbath, Hendrix. My little brother Chris and our friend Nick were way more post-punk and eclectic than I was, spending lots of time going to record stores and listening to the Violent Femmes and REM and Hüsker Dü and Guadalcanal Diary and Mojo Nixon.

As my ears have evolved, I’ve developed a long list of interests and inspirations. Since the early days I’ve been on a journey to get the melodies and noises out of my head and into yours. If it’s groceries that you need, it’s groceries you’ll have.

So, with that as background, I sought to make a record. I felt like it might be a mixture of Freedy Johnston’s ‘This Perfect World,’ and ‘The Turtles Present the Battle of the Bands,’ which was an album that my brother and I played over and over when we were kids. Freedy wanted to make one perfect record that was cohesive from start to finish. The Turtles wanted to keep you guessing from song to song. My record seemed like it might be somewhere in the middle. I don’t strive to sound like different bands or acts, but I do write many different types of songs, and I believe that there are listeners who enjoy such a journey.

Although I haven’t heard the album on CD, the production is fantastic. Very open. How was it to work with Don Farwell, the renowned engineer of Seattle’s Earwig Studio?

Don is a master engineer. He knows the tools, knows the rules, and he knows when to break them to serve the song. He and I and all the bands joke that all we ever get to see is the back of his head, from the couch in the control room at Earwig. That, and a bunch of squiggly sound-waves going by on ProTools. Don has an amazing sense, built on years of experience and great ears, about what is possible from “set up” to “ship it!” He knows mic placement and room design and has great vintage and newer amps and mics to get just the right sound all the way down the path of the signal. He can do analog and digital and effects and samples and all these things – but mostly he knows what will work for what you are trying to do right now. And he’s absolutely willing to experiment in order to get what you need when you need it. He makes a potentially crazy-making array of tools, choices, and options seem completely comfortable and easy. You say, “Hey, do you think we can get this to sound like that?” and Don has got several options and knows which one will work to serve the song. And each time you are about to record, you will hear him in the headphones, politely asking you to “tune, please.”

Don doesn’t talk about it as much, but he’s a top-notch producer, musician, and collaborator. He hears where you are headed, and offers just the right suggestion at the right time. When you need to have something that you hear and you don’t know how, Don does, and he’s got the chops to pick up any instrument and deliver the groceries. Don also is in Suitcase with Ed Otto, and is going out to do some shows with Lance Hofstad of Olroarlo (the two of them made SUCH a great record!), so I encourage people to follow Earwig Studios, but also to listen to Suitcase and go out and see Don if they can.

This past week, Don totally indulged me and cut me instrumental copies of all the songs on the record where that was possible (it wasn’t possible with ‘This Bright Eagle’ because of the live-ish nature of the recording, and ‘Another Way,’ which I had originally recorded and mixed at home. Then, also at my request (I asked for a “dance remix”), Don RE-RECORDED the instruments on ‘Collapse,’ added a great background vocal from singer Amy Hall, and sped it up into Daft Punk territory! MY GAWD, it’s fun to listen to! I can’t wait to share it with people after the album comes out!

Every song tells a different story, would you like to share what was the main idea behind the album?

‘Missives at the Turn’ is an album of change and transformation. In 2013, I was coming out of a very long and mostly happy relationship, and I really needed to find out who my friends were if I wanted to create more health and sustainability. It turns out, upon further study, that bicycles are our friends. Kayaks are our friends. Guitars are our friends. Salsa dancing is our friend. Food preparation is one of our friends. Hiking can also be especially friendly. I strove over the next five years to truly devote myself and my efforts to making positive changes in my life. I worked to do this in a way that would make me more able to care for myself and others in a more sustainable way.

You asked earlier about making a “solo album,” and it is sort of a solo album, and sort of more collaborative. I write the words and the music and I have ideas about arrangement and production and sounds in my head that I’m trying to get. But, I also love to create space to collaborate with others. When I started this project, I started with the foundation that drummer Jen Gilleran and I created together, and then I asked my friends, family members, and colleagues (and at one point, as I mentioned, asked Don’s friends, family members, and colleagues) to play on things that I think they might enjoy. But, even though I bring in people with different musical histories and different influences, I do hew to a main idea behind the album, and each of the songs.

There is definitely a “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts” vibe to this album. The idea that you can still play music with your friends, even in the midst of a global pandemic, is in this record. The idea that people still need a three-minute rock song is definitely in this record.

I mentioned that growth and transformation and change were central ideas. Also, over the period of 2013 to 2018, I was having various experiences that made me think about questions like — “How is communication the same – whether we are using electronic media, or quill pens and parchment?” We are born into a relationship with our parents, others, the world around us, and from birth, we cannot survive without interaction and communication. What can we learn about looking at the relationship between what we say and how we say it? The missives in ‘Missives at the Turn’ are twelve letters, hand-written for the person who needs them, from a time of significant change.

I do not know what history might remember about us or about this time. I’m pretty sure it will not smile upon me for making a “great road-trip record” with everything going on with gasoline and energy now and in our future. Yes, I drive a gasoline car. Yes, it gets good mileage. Yes, I think about the future and about history. Those ideas and others are in my songs.

Can you share a few words about each of the albums?

Each song on this record does contain or suggest something new that I learned:

From ‘Fess Up, I was reminded of the power of song-writing exercises, shared perspective, divination, and maybe even haruspicy.

From ‘Gibraltar,’ I learned that you can finish writing a song and perform it in front of people on the same day, or maybe that only happens at an open mic in Te Anau, New Zealand in the fall of 2016.

From ‘Another Way,’ I learned the amazing power that can be found in following very clear and simple directions.

From ‘Hesitate,’ I learned that some people think I’m metal. Which is totally metal.

From ‘This Bright Eagle,’ I learned that sometimes you have to sacrifice one method (overdubs, for example) in order to get the glory of another method (three people sitting down and recording something live with one take of vocals, guitars, and a box). And that sometimes an overdubbed accordion and additional background vocal might also be precisely the thing you need.

From ‘Mouth and Collar,’ I re-learned the power of collaboration.

From ‘Pinky Promise,’ I learned that there is delight and wonder in the mysterious process of name-giving.

From ‘Lisette at the Mall,’ I learned that even a fairly straightforward and light-hearted song can benefit from invoking the spirit of Love Battery.

From ‘Letters,’ I learned the joy of coming ashore in a viking ship caroming over a sea of drums.

From ‘Collapse’ I learned that if you open up your song to the idea of a dance remix, you could find yourself dancing in the mud next to an alpine lake a week later.

‘Missives at the Turn,’ sprang out of a period of change and renewal. About half of the songs (‘This Bright Eagle,’ ‘Lisette at the Mall,’ ‘Kaiju,’ ‘Pinky Promise,’ ‘Fess Up,’ ‘Mouth and Collar’) were born from songwriting challenges. Others came from a particular feeling, or a memorable meeting or conversation, or a dream or daydream.

Some songwriting challenge examples:

One person takes a song that they love or know the structure of, and they rewrite the lyrics and hand them to the second person. This one I learned from singer-songwriter Clive Gregson, who was my teacher at the Puget Sound Guitar Camp back in 2010. Clive is a solo artist, but played with Any Trouble, Gregson & Collister, and the Richard Thompson Band. The structure is important, because you know it will work as a song, where a poem might not.

‘Fess Up,’ ‘Mouth and Collar,’ and ‘This Bright Eagle’ were all written this way.

Go someplace with a notebook and no musical instruments, and write a song. I’m sure this is in a book or something, but I just did it.

‘Lisette at the Mall’ was written this way.

Ask someone for an inspiration word.

‘Kaiju’ was written this way.

Write a song in response to a dream. I don’t think I saw that one anyplace.

‘Letters’ was written in this way.

Write a song as you record the song. ‘Another Way’ was written like this.

Performing-songwriter (and voice of The Civilians) Chris ‘Livz’ Livesay and I have known each other since we met at Evergreen in Olympia in 1981, and over the past few years, we have been getting together for semi-regular song-sharing sessions. One such session happened at my temporary home on the waterfront of Anderson Island in mid-October of 2018.

Sometime earlier, I had written ‘This Bright Eagle’ as a song-writing exercise. I had taken another popular song that I admire, and rewritten the lyrics. Then, when Livz and I got together to play our latest songs for one another, I showed him the lyrics for ‘This Bright Eagle,’ and asked him if he wanted to write some music. He picked up his guitar, chose the chords, and sang the melody. I think it took about ten minutes before the two of us were singing the song, pretty much as you hear it on the record.

I put ‘This Bright Eagle’ out on the EP, with Jen Gilleran and Livz and me playing live in the studio. For the album version, I invited Don to add an accordion overdub. On the spot, a new vocal line for the chorus came to me, and Don did a great job adding that and some sweet harmony throughout the verses. Livz and I both love the way the two versions turned out.

‘Kaiju’ was born when I told my fiance’s daughter Alexandria that I’d like to write her a song for her birthday, and asked her to give me an inspiration word to work with. She said “Kaiju,” which is from the Japanese monster movies she and I both love, and when you dig into the history of those films, you learn about some aspects of the history of U.S. atomic testing which inspired them. Part of that story is in the song, along with some intrepid Japanese wilderness scouts inspired by the films, and the emotional rise of the song is about a pair of leggings and a small dog with formidable powers. The song is very fun to play live, and I’m very excited to share the video which Lance created that includes video of our live performance. I’m enjoying the song anew this week, because Don just send me an instrumental version, and I love how Kaiju sounds with no vocals. There are just the right amount of twists and turns in that song, even though it’s largely a chug in E.

The project has been active for almost 20 years as your first EP (‘Cherries’) was released in 2003. How come there’s so much time between your first EP and the second one, ‘To the Island, From the Lake’ which was released last year?

I’ve been writing songs right along since I was maybe 10 or 12. At least those are the earliest ones I can still remember.

In 2003, I made an EP because that’s what I could afford at the time. I had several bunches of songs that I could have recorded, and a few of them made their way across time and into that first day in 2019 with Don. They are good songs; some are pretty great. But to be recording and releasing songs from the late 1900s in the 2020s didn’t seem “fresh.” Something will happen with those songs and recordings, and there are some that I still pull out at coffeehouse sessions. The EP, ‘To the Island, From the Lake,’ is essentially the first half of the full-length album, minus some background vocals and other instruments. I worked on songs as fast as I could during the height of the pandemic, and ended up doing 6 songs a year instead of the 12 I wanted. When I was younger and in bands that played live, I put out music more often. Making the switch from drums to guitar has been a factor as well, but I guess that with the delays of life, and Covid on top of that, when the record is finally released (October 7th, 2022), it will be the right day for this record to find some ears.

The new release featured six songs from the previous EP, but completely re-recorded?
No, if you listen to both, you’ll hear that the recordings are MOSTLY the same, with a couple of new parts to make them sound more full. When I went to make this new record, it was similar to 2003 in this way – when I started, I didn’t know how many songs I’d be able to afford to record, and when Covid hit, I didn’t know how many I would be finishing, or what the final product would be. Also, it was my first time working with Don, and working in a studio that wasn’t also someone’s (very cool) basement, so I was intimidated and did not know what the final product would look like. I made six songs and Covid hit, and the recordings languished and then we finished the last song. And, so I put out the first six, not knowing whether there would really be any more in this completed batch. Then Covid got a bit easier and I took six more songs in, and as we did those, I was able to solve a couple of problems that listeners pointed out. If you listen to ‘To the Island, From the Lake,’ which is the EP that’s on streaming as of today, you can hear that there are six songs, and they sound “done.” But listeners pointed out that the “choruses weren’t very chorusy” and some of them sounded a bit thin. So, as I’m recording the second batch of songs for this record, I realize I can ADD some instruments to make the songs sound full, and to add some background vocals to fill out the choruses and bridges. So, we did exactly that. Fleshed them out just a bit more; but it’s still the same underlying recordings.

‘Fess Up’ has additional vocals and some keyboards that have been added.
‘Gibraltar’ has additional vocals and some keyboards as well.
‘Another Way’ has some additional keyboard bass.
‘Hesitate’ has some new “texture” guitars from Don Farwell.
‘This Bright Eagle’ has some accordion from Don, and a new background vocal from him.
‘Mouth and Collar’ has a VERY quiet mandolin part that I added.

You’re originally a drummer and you’ve been in the music business since the 80s, would you like to tell us on which albums have you been featured? Were you working as a session musician?

I’ve been in seven or so different bands over the years which have released music LPs and EPs, including Hadees Market (which has featured members of most of those other bands), and I’ve also played some one-off live performances or recording projects. In all of those bands except Hadees Market, I’ve been the drummer (and I definitely played drums on most of the Hadees Market songs that came out on the ‘Cherries’ EP back in 2003 as well as playing guitar and other instruments). Most of those bands released albums or EPs on cassette, and mostly no one will ever hear them.

My biggest experience as a drummer was in the band ‘5 Fishermen,’ with my dear friend since elementary school, Nick Huff, and my younger brother, Chris Williamson. We had played in Olympia in an earlier punk rock band that started writing and recording songs in 1979/80, but 5 Fishermen was something that Chris and Nick got going in the late ‘80s (while I was playing with Chris Livesay and Christopher James) with another drummer named Dan.

I saw these two guys – my little brother and Nick, who I had played with since we were children, and they were playing with this other very good drummer, and I am not ashamed to say I was JEALOUS AS HELL. So, when at a certain point Dan had some other stuff to do, I jumped into 5 Fishermen with a vengeance. We put out two CDs and one 7 inch four song EP. We played four or five shows a month for most of the months from 1990 to 1995, when I had to move to the East Coast for work.

We lost my little brother Chris to colon cancer at age 54 in 2020 (get your screenings, people!!) but being in a band with him, practicing and playing every week for those five years (and 15 years if you include the earlier Olypunk band) was absolutely unforgettable, and a peak experience of my life. When I was playing drums on Nick’s breathtakingly-beautiful songs, or Chris’s, or my own songs, I was definitely experiencing a form of transcendence (and for any psychonauts in your audience, that’s without any chemicals).

All of the Hadees Market releases feature two of Williamson’s dear friends and longtime musical collaborators, Chris Livesay from The Civilians, and Tommy Simpson from Fale. Would you like to tell us who else was part of the album making?

Thank you for the question. I have been SUPREMELY fortunate to play with some amazing players who I know well, and a couple of amazing new folks who I’ve met through Don Farwell.

On all the songs, you will hear me playing guitar (rhythm, or sometimes both rhythm and lead) and singing lead and (most of the time) backing vocals. I also have a few parts on keyboards, percussion, and a very minimal mandolin part on ‘Mouth and Collar.’ I play the rhythm or “center channel” part on ‘What You Want.’ I’m an intermediate-level rhythm guitar player, but I committed to myself that I would play guitar on all of these songs, and Don can really make you sound better than you are, and really make you excited about getting better as a player so you can do more things.

Jen Gilleran, who is simply an amazing drummer, percussionist, and rhythm architect, plays drums on all the songs except ‘Another Way’ and ‘Collapse,’ which don’t have drums, so if someone’s hitting something, and you are hearing it, It’s most likely Jen. She did a VERY COOL tabla part on “Hesitate,” which is great now, and I’m hoping to feature it on a slightly different version of that song later on. Jen plays cajon on ‘This Bright Eagle,’ as well. When I started the project, Don said “Hey, I know you are a drummer, but I know this great drummer, and she can just come in and nail takes and let you focus on all of the other elements.” He was 100 percent correct, but he sort of undersold Jen’s amazing talents. I was blown away. If you listen to “Hesitate,” the original song had a much different feel and Jen made a great suggestion to change it. Same with ‘Mouth and Collar.’ On ‘Lisette at the Mall,’ Jen listened to what I was doing on the guitar at the end of each chorus line, where I have a two-beat accent, and she essentially wrote a tom part that goes around what I’m playing. I didn’t really understand what she was doing until I heard it played back. She’s fierce.

Tony “AMP” Peterson is my fiancee’s son-in-law, and he and I can play music for hours and have an amazing time. He usually plays lead guitar, and he has an incredibly gifted ear, but for ‘Hesitate,’ he laid down a bassline that perfectly complemented my guitar part. He totally got the in-your-face spirit of that song and nailed it.

Ed Otto plays guitar on the left channel of ‘What You Want’ all the way through the song, and then he also comes in on two intertwining solo parts in the break. Ed is the other guitarist (with Don Farwell) in Suitcase, and he absolutely took the central solo to territory I could not have imagined. However, when I heard it, I was SO THANKFUL. On this song, his playing reminds me of the very best of Robert Quine, who plays some amazing stuff on Voidoids and Tom Waits records, but also played tons with Lou Reed. Some of my very favorite playing of Mr. Quine’s is on Matthew Sweet records, and Ed Otto is totally channeling that vibe on ‘What You Want.’ Don got Ed to do some tracks remotely, and then flew them into the song after we did the basic tracks.

Sharon Chang (who also has an exquisite singing voice) played the very subtle and delicate piano part on ‘Mouth and Collar.’ Again, she completely saved the EP project, because it wouldn’t have come out in 2021 without Sharon being able to get to the piano during the pandemic.

Tommy Simpson plays a regular bassline and also a distorted lead bass line on ‘Letters.’ I had shared several of the songs with Tommy prior to the recording of the album, and when he heard ‘Letters’ in an earlier form, he chose that one as his favorite. Tommy also plays drums in the Hadees Market live band. I’ve known Tommy since I was 20 and he was 18, and he’s always been able to pick up absolutely any instrument and do something amazing with it. Tommy has been in several bands that are way more famous than Hadees Market, but you might see him playing at a skate park in The Fakies, or you might hear him this October 15th at Darrell’s Tavern in Seattle playing in his magnum opus space rock band called “Fale.” They just made a record with Tad Doyle and it is ABSOLUTELY HYPNOTIC.

I met Chris Livesay, and another musical colleague, Christopher “Siege” James, in college when I was 18 and he was 19. The three of us played in a band throughout the ‘80’s and released a scandalous single that got some attention, and then a full-length album on cassette in 1990. I call Christopher Lawrence Livesay the name “Livz,” pronounced like “he lives!” and he and I have something of a songwriting conversation going on between us. He has written and now recorded so many songs with his excellent band The Civilians, and I have this big backlog of song and am just putting out my first full-length record, but we inspire one another to new heights of songwriting each time we get to work together, which, thankfully for me, is fairly often. Livz plays bass on five tracks on ‘Missives at the Turn,’ and also plays the right channel electric guitar on ‘What You Want,’ and does some background vocals on several songs. Livz also plays left channel acoustic guitar on ‘This Bright Eagle,’ and sings on the choruses on that song.

And batting cleanup is Don Farwell, who played bass on two songs, lead texture guitar on ‘Hesitate’ and ‘Letters,’ rhythm guitar on ‘Collapse’ (while I’m playing the arpeggiated one), and also played keyboards, synthesizers, drum machine, percussion, effects, sang backing vocals, and played accordion on ‘This Bright Eagle.’ Don can do a bunch of things with guitars and instruments. He can do some straight ahead punk rawk bass like on ‘Fess Up,’ or ‘Mouth and Collar,’ but he can also do really non-predictable guitar parts and keyboard lines and is super creative in his approach. And I’ve never seen anyone who can just sit or stand in front of a mic and do harmony after harmony and always sound fresh.

How do you usually approach songwriting?

I don’t have an established process. Sometimes I start with words or phrases, and more often melody. But I might also get a rhythm, or start with an idea. When it won’t let go of me, that’s when I know it’s going to be a song. That’s my usual non-established established process.

As I mentioned, in 1981, when I moved to Olympia and began to attend The Evergreen State College, I met two guys who became bandmates and lifelong friends, “Siege,” and “Livz.” Chris Livesay went on to several other great bands in the ‘90’s, including the massively overlooked Crush Velour, and about five years ago Livz formed The Civilians, who are doing lots of shows, videos, and radio in Seattle.

In the late ‘80’s, Livz and Siege and I formed a band called Quick Skillet Dinner or QSD, and we put out a single that got some attention, and an album-length cassette that was popular in a juvenile detention facility in Fairbanks, Alaska, but pretty much nowhere else. That was really the first time I got a chance to put some songs of mine out there.

At that time, I would almost always start with a melody, and sing words or think of ideas until something clicked. I still use this method.

More recently, I’ve started setting myself (or participating in conversations with others that lead to) songwriting challenges like starting with the words, or trading words and music with another songwriter, or writing to a particular theme or word or question, or going into a song through rhythm or mood.

I have been very fortunate that the melodies come to me, and don’t show any signs of stopping. With today’s technology, making short recordings of tunes I sing or play is easy and quick. The challenge is to make good notes for yourself or leave clear breadcrumbs to find your way back to the ideas that have some stickiness.

For years, when I’ve thought about songwriting, I have said to myself “if I could stop doing this, I probably would.” It’s not an easy or convenient thing to do. And getting songs from a napkin to a recording and to people’s ears in 2022 is neither straightforward or affordable. But even if I never record many of these songs, they arrive.

I tend to write in batches. Sometimes I’ve been able to do songwriting every day in a row for weeks, but more often songs come in groups. Either way, there is a lot of work to each part of the process once I’ve got a nugget. You can’t force it. As Gord Downie says, you need to “live with the songs.” You need to let them seep into you awhile and listen to what they are trying to tell you. Then, you serve the song as you work to bring it into the world. I definitely have songs that showed up in an hour or two, and definitely have others that didn’t get finished for years. It’s always work, although mostly it’s very enjoyable work.

Society’s response to COVID, the war on Ukraine, and everything else going on in the world recently have all made me ask “is writing and sharing these songs important right now?” It has also changed my processes for songwriting. I was writing a lot in public spaces or with others, and now I’m writing more on walks or at home. And whether or not writing and sharing songs “matters,” it’s a thing I do and I’ll continue doing it.

Are you planning to play some gigs in the near future?

[Today, it’s September 14th, 2022]. As of this day, we are scheduled to play at the historic Shanty Tavern (look it up; it’s a great old roadhouse) on Lake City Way in Seattle on Friday, November 4th.

I’m also putting together a coffee-house record release party on October 12th to roughly coincide with the record release on Friday, October 7th.

I’m going to be in London during the last week in September, but although I’m taking my travel guitar, I have not YET been asked to drive out to appear on Dave Gilyeat’s BBC Music Introducing Oxfordshire (but there’s still time, Dave).

I’m also busking here and there, playing open mics, and planning some solo acoustic stuff and even STREAMING (eeek).

End this interview with some of your favourite albums. Have you found something new lately you would like to recommend to our readers?

I could definitely do something exhaustive here, but let’s see if I can keep it to ten, with some classic perfect albums and a couple of newer but still perfect things: Freedy Johnston’s ‘This Perfect World;’ Charlie Campbell’s amazing ‘Goldcard’ record; Gillian Welch’s ‘Time (The Revelator);’ Laura Viers’ ‘Galaxies;’ This is the Kit’s ‘Moonshine Freeze;’ Neil Young’s ‘On The Beach;’ Kristin-Allen Zito’s ‘The Atlas;’ Aimee Mann’s ‘The Forgotten Arm;’ and Joan Shelley’s ‘Over and Even,’ and you absolutely have to find the new ‘Olroarlo’ Album when it’s released in the next few months. And 88 Grizzly; watch for that! OOPS. That list goes to eleven.

And then ‘Rubber Soul’ and ‘Revolver’ by that Band Which Shall Not Be Named. Cuz ya gotta.

And absolutely every album by the Tragically Hip (but ‘Trouble at the Henhouse’ is the most psychedelic one). And ‘100 Percent Fun’ and ‘Blue Sky on Mars’ by Matthew Sweet. And the first two Sabbath records, and the first two by BÖC. And the Stranglers’ ‘Rattus Norvegicus.’ And ALL the Elliot Smith records. And OH DEAR GOD, let’s not forget ‘Axe Victim’ by Bebop Deluxe. And the new Civilians record, Lush and Tumble. And the new Fale record, which you can find on Bandcamp. I could go on, but I’ll hit the breaks.

Thank you. Last word is yours.

Thank you SO MUCH, Klemen!!

What an honor. I hope that every brand-new band gets a chance to do something like this, and anyone else like me who is releasing their first full-length record as they prepare to enter their sixties.

Let’s sum up with a quote from Billy Bragg – “Our enemy really isn’t capitalism; it’s cynicism.”

With everything going on in the world today, figure out what matters to you, and make the difference you can make. I have been very lucky to have traveled a fair amount internationally (back before we knew about carbon offsets, and since then with some carbon offsets). And whether I was visiting the college radio station in Sarajevo, or singing Beatles songs with school-children on Sakhalin, or hanging out with elderly jazz fans in a pub in Hamburg, or visiting a family on a dryland wheat farm in northern Oregon, music has brought people together my entire life. Music has shown me a different version of what is possible when we focus on the areas where we agree. Some think that the 1960’s can easily be thrown into the dustbin of history from the perspective of today, especially when seeing all of the dreams that have been broken. But on this one thing, I encourage you to listen to your punk rawk grandpa – music unites people in a way that is very unique and magical and fundamentally not subject to greed.

Which I guess brings me to one other quote from Jessie J – “We just wanna make the world dance; forget about the price tag.”

Klemen Breznikar

Headline photo: Greg Don Farwell

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